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Tag Archives: Tenth Amendment

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, March 20, 2017:

AG Jeff Sessions

Less well known, perhaps, than the Second Amendment are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, efforts by the founders to chain down the national government “from mischief.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions appears to need a refresher course in them, to wit:

The Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and

The Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

What Sessions appears to have forgotten is that law enforcement is to be left largely up to the states, closer to the people themselves, and thus easier to control. Communists, on the other hand, have been pointed in their attacks on local law enforcement, which keeps getting in the way of installing a national police force.

Speaking in Richmond, Virginia last week, Sessions addressed a gathering of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials and expressed his concerns about the rising rate of violent crime in the US over the past two years. He doesn’t think it’s an anomaly:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 12, 2016:

Social Security Poster:

There’s no doubt that Texas Representative Sam Johnson means well. He and his constituents are concerned about their financial futures and about the viability of Social Security as an important part of those futures. So on Thursday he offered his plan “to permanently save Social Security.” He calls it the “Social Security Reform Act.”

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, October 12, 2016:

Frédéric Bastiat

Frederic Bastiat was a “classical liberal” who lived briefly in the first half of the 19th century in France. But his legacy, including his development of the fallacy of the broken window through his Parable of the Broken Window continues to resonate today. He is perhaps best known for his definition of “legal plunder”:

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

When it was enforced at the point of a pistol by a government bureaucrat, Bastiat opposed it:

I do not dispute [politicians’] right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.

There’s little doubt, then, that Bastiat would support the philosophy of The Bastiat Society, founded a dozen years ago:

Capitalism is the only economic system to produce widespread peace and prosperity. But if those in the private sector do not understand the intellectual and cultural institutions that make entrepreneurship and peaceful trade possible, what chance do they have to withstand a steady series of attacks from those who desire to bring capitalism and personal freedom to an end?

One of the battles that freedom lost was Social Security. Enacted as part of FDR’s Great Society, it remains a fixture that appears to be immovable. Today the only conversation heard is how to keep it from going bankrupt.

All manner of “fixes” are proposed. Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform came up with ten fixes while The Motley Fool proposed 15:

Cut benefits across the board right now;

Change the COLA;

Raise the earnings cap;

Allow beneficiaries to invest in the stock market;

Do nothing and cut benefits when the [trust fund] is depleted;

Do nothing and enact payroll tax hikes when the [trust fund] is depleted;

Offer a buyout [to the wealthy, removing them from the program];

Link life expectancies to benefit levels;

Means-test [to qualify] for benefits;

Raise the full retirement age;

Use the Estate Tax to cover Social Security [shortfalls];

Freeze the purchasing power of benefits [i.e., eliminate COLA altogether];

Freeze the … benefits on a sliding scale;

Transfer [some] costs to [the] government [now]; and/or

Increase the payroll tax on everyone right now.

Social Security has the peculiar characteristics similar to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: eventually it is exposed and it ends in bankruptcy. The difference is that Social Security is enforced by people with guns and badges: everyone must be covered and forced to support everyone else, or else.

No one questions the math: the program’s “trust fund” is slowly being liquidated to cover the annual shortfalls between revenues and benefits. Thanks to the Baby Boomers, the liquidation is increasing more rapidly: those Boomers have developed the nasty habit of living longer, far beyond the original mortality tables predicted back in the mid-1930s. There’s also the declining birth rate, which is reducing the number of new entrants into the system whose taxes are needed to support it.

It’s the ideology: freedom versus force. So-called conservatives want to fix it, as do liberals. Conservatives, when pressed, question the intergenerational conflict that requires young people to contribute to a plan paying benefits to seniors. They question the use of resources: tax and spend now, or save and invest for later. Conservatives even argue over who should control the money. They never question its morality.

Liberals think it’s a proper function of government, going along with the Supreme Court’s decision in Helvering v. Davis that the program is constitutional, the Tenth Amendment notwithstanding.

As economist Herb Stein noted: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” With Social Security it will continue as long as it can be patched up with temporary fixes. Eventually the mathematics and the bond market will end it.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, July 6, 2016:

Flag of the Vice President of the United States

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s chief campaign strategist, has no doubt a long and carefully considered list of criteria which The Donald’s VP must meet in order to be offered the position. The clock is ticking: he is due to make the announcement next week, before the Republican convention, which begins on Monday the week following.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 5, 2016:

Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa

Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, one of just a very few being currently vetted for Donald Trump’s running mate for vice president, met with The Donald on Monday. Also in attendance were Paul Manafort, Trump’s chief campaign strategist, and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Following the meeting, Ernst told reporters:

A modest bill, getting little press and clothed in innocuous terms, could spell the end of the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on its “federal reserve note” currency. When Texas Governor Greg Abbot signed it into law almost a year ago, he said:

The Texas Comptroller’s Office has begun to receive bids from private contractors interested in building the country’s first state gold storage facility, the Texas Bullion Depository (TBD). When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the bill providing for it last July, he said it was all about saving fees being paid to store the state’s gold in New York banks:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 30, 2015:

It has been said that someone with a reputation as an early riser can sleep ’til noon with impunity. So it appears to be with Jason Chaffetz, first elected to the House of Representatives from Utah’s 3rd congressional district in 2008. In the 111th Congress, he scored 92 out of 100 in the John Birch Society’s Freedom Index, which rates congressmen based on their adherence to the constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. In other words, the FI is a shortcut to seeing just how closely any congressman comes to keeping his oath of office.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 29, 2015:

Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz

With the simultaneous reintroduction of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) in the Senate by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and in the House by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), concerns about federal sanctions against Internet gambling are raising constitutional issues once again. If enacted, the bill would violate the 10th Amendment’s guarantee that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, shall be reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It could also be extended to violate the Second Amendment: If gambling online can be prohibited by the federal government, why couldn’t the sale of guns and ammunition as well?

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, June 15, 2015:

Within days of learning that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law the state’s Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA), then-Attorney General Eric holder sought to put the upstart governor and his insignificant state in their place: SAPA was null and void. Federal officials would continue to operate in Kansas in spite of the new law, and if one of them were arrested, there would be trouble!

U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson punted last week on the Brady Campaign’s lawsuit against Kansas’ Second Amendment Protection Act by declaring that the Brady Campaign lacked standing to bring the suit in the first place. She wrote:

At this time, Brady Campaign has not alleged an actual or imminent injury that is fairly traceable to the enforcement of the Act [that would therefore] be addressable by a favorable decision by this Court.

This allowed Judge Robinson to avoid considering all the various “issues” raised by Brady: “The Court therefore need not reach the other issues raised in Defendants’ motion to dismiss.”

What “other issues”? For starters is the law’s declaration that “any act, treaty, order, rule or regulation by the government of the United States which violates the Second Amendment of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.”

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, May 11, 2015:

Once perceived to be invincible, government bureaucrats issuing decrees and mandates from on high are being exposed for what really are: Wizards of Oz. It was Tom Woods’ book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century that let the genie out of the bottle.

All Woods did was explain how the founders intended for the states to be the last line of defense against federal overreach. It put in place the Bill of Rights which contains the Tenth Amendment:

This article first was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, May 11, 2015:

Once perceived to be invincible, government bureaucrats issuing decrees and mandates from on high are being exposed for what really are: Wizards of Oz. It was Tom Woods’ book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century that let the genie out of the bottle.

All Woods did was explain how the founders intended for the states to be the last line of defense against federal overreach. It put in place the Bill of Rights which contains the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 11, 2015:

The Bill of Rights

When Minnesota State Representative Nick Zerwas was 15 years old, he was told he had only months to live. Informed that he wouldn’t be able to get a heart transplant, Zerwas was told by his doctor that he might be saved by a surgical procedure that was still experimental. Said Zerwas: “That was my right to try. I fully believe life is worth fighting for, and government has no role in getting in the way.”

On May 1 Zerwas’ bill, the Minnesota Right to Try Act, passed the state house unanimously, 123-0. It had previously passed the state senate, 60-4, on April 21, and on May 5, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed it into law.

In general the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibits access by patients to experimental drugs, but

Last Thursday Montana Governor Steve Bullock signed into law the strongest prohibition yet by any state against accepting “free” used military equipment from the federal government. A month ago New Jersey Chris Christie signed into law prohibiting such “free” used war materiel without express approval from the local governments involved. Montana’s new law outright prohibits any department in the state from receiving drones that are armored or weaponized (or both), military aircraft, grenades or grenade launchers, silencers and “militarized armored vehicles.”

In New Jersey the bill passed both houses unanimously; in Montana the House voted 79-20 in favor while the Senate voted 46-1 in favor. Under the new law police departments remain free to purchase such materiel, but

This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 27, 2014:

Sheriff Richard Mack

In an exclusive interview with The New American, retired Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), highlighted the successes that members of his organization are having in resisting unconstitutional challenges by the federal government and declared that with these successes, “We are taking back America one county at a time!”

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, July 2, 2014:

Events of recent months have clearly revealed Barack Obama for what he is: a revolutionary progressive determined to change the United States into a fascist system of controls over every aspect of a citizen’s life. In spite of a recent series of events that would have humiliated and shamed a less committed totalitarian into silence and withdrawal, Obama instead has pressed on with his agenda.

On Saturday, in his weekly press conference, Obama announced that he was taking things into his own hands:

Something that the lamestream media missed entirely happened on Wednesday, June 4, in Oklahoma: the governor signed into law a bill affirming what is already guaranteed to each state in the US Constitution: that gold and silver coin are legal tender. Historians looking back may recall that day as the day the Federal Reserve’s hegemony over money ended.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments from Paul Clement, the lead attorney in Bond v. United States, that the federal government overstepped its constitutional authority in prosecuting a Pennsylvania housewife for attempting to poison a former friend.

If the court rules in favor of the government, implications for federal enforcement by police power of other treaties, those ratified as well as those pending (like the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) are

In a dreadfully slanted and intellectually dishonest offering from Associated Press writer David Lieb on Friday, efforts by the several states to nullify unconstitutional federal laws are derided as irrelevant and the matter already settled.

So why did he write it? Perhaps that’s the underlying message: the feds are getting nervous.

He calls the possibility that a state might actually arrest a federal agent for enforcing a federal law that a state thinks is unconstitutional “farfetched” but “conceivable.” He refers to the bill about to become law in Missouri as